Our site is an independent online newspaper. We publish 50 to 100 stories every day.

We have 100+ active writers and 3 editors.

That means the site is being updated all day, from early morning florida time to late evening California time and sometimes even later.

We are being filtered, so update frequency by itself is probably not the answer.

If you are not hit by panda, then fequency might explain it, but if Panda hit you, frequency will not undo it.

Our google traffic is down 40%

Also we have several news blogs. they are all suffering too. Some of that is because we had to lay off staff and so now we're having trouble maintaining those smaller sites, so I have no idea if panda did that or if it is because we're a lot slower adding news.

Of course, our readers are now confused because we're not updating them as much.

Most of the form letters I see (which I never respond to) are usually from new sites that raraely have any value to offer, so I think it is from new people who have no idea what they are doing, and who just use software that is built into their system or their link building system. - and then they wonder why nobody responds.

Good advice. You would think that in the age of social, that more people would get it, but it doesn't seem to be the case. I've modified my own requests over the past few years, always looking for that personal touch. @tomharari has a good tip too - look back on the messages you sent previously, we learn what you can from them. You may even find a nugget in there that you can use or modify slightly.

Dan's note about "seek first to understand before being understood" fits right in with social - and I forgot I read that such a long time ago.

About two months ago, I modified the structure of one of my notes addressed to a particular demographic because I realised I was making it far too hard for recipients to decide to interact. I realised I wasted a whole year doing things the hard way becaese now I get 2 to 4 times the response.

With a news site, it hasn't always been easy to get people to respond, but when they do, it almost always pays off. Giving back value really works - you don't always have to give away tickets to do it. And now, as I said, making it easy to respond generates interest faster.

I will test the shorter subject lines too, and let you know what happens.